I can only guess how you are defining vibe. However, if you are considering intellectual atmosphere, this is what a faculty member with experience at several colleges said about Hamilton:
(Meet the New Faculty: Jason Cieply, Russian Studies - News - Hamilton College)
I believe there are lots of schools that have very smart kids. Vibe in my mind is more about the personality of the place not intellect.
I think there is a difference in the
vibe projected from kids who attend UC because they want to attend a school with the most rigid core curriculum and those that attend extremely open curriculums like Amherst, Grinnell and Hamilton. Perhaps I am an idealist about fit but I see these polar opposite approaches as drawing students of different temperament.
I certainly think both groups are talented and extremely smart. So I guess we just disagree with what constitutes “vibe”.
I think you’re both right—a rigorous core is exciting to an intellectually curious student because it covers a lot ground. An open curriculum invites the student her/himself to create the ground they’d like to cover.
I have a young DS (high school class of 2026) with a wide range of interests—history, science, engineering, art, Japanese, philosophy, politics, etc. He’s hungry for knowledge and memorizes facts easily. Tbh, it can be a little exhausting sometimes. I associate this type a little more with UChicago than Amherst or Hamilton. But I could see him happy at either—loving the challenge of the core at Chicago or pursuing whatever he wants in an open curriculum. I’d probably look at other cultural factors for fit—like athletic or Greek culture, rural/urban, etc to make a decision.
This appears very similar to what the OP stated regarding their son, an aspect that seems to have been missed by some:
Let us keep in mind that the OPs son is just now starting his sophomore year of HS. His thoughts/interests may become more defined over the next couple of years.
Maybe Reed College?
Lots of good suggestions here.
Note that St. Johns has a Santa Fe and Annapolis campus. The Santa Fe campus in particular is beautiful and is in NO WAY urban - it is on the edge of a wild/natural area. And no school in America is as devoted to a strong core curriculum as St. Johns, not even Chicago or Columbia. but it is TINY and a very niche vibe.
Another suggestion that wasn’t on the list so far is Lawrence University in Appleton. Check out its entry in “Colleges that Change Lives.” Not as well known as many other schools on this list, but excellent school, strong required core curriculum (and campus-wide freshman seminars studying everything from Miles Davis’ music to Greek Philosophy).
Just going off of other kids I have known who felt the allure of the rep of Chicago (as a place for kids truly interested in learning as much of the world’s “great ideas” as possible, in becoming broadly and deeply educated), one proxy way of thinking about the campus culture is looking at their graduates career choices (most have percentages on their webpages).
See how many kids are going on to grad school, or into non-profits, or education or other service, etc., vs. how many are going into finance, consulting, tech, pre-professional type things. Some schools (like Wash U in St. Louis) are heavily pre-professional. That often leads to a different vibe on campus, different approaches to learning in classrooms, etc. (for instance: many students interested in med school are terrified of getting a B, with good reason. This can lead to a lack of intellectual risk-taking).
You’ll find that many elite universities have a very high percentage of their recent graduates who go into finance/the professions/etc., while a group of small schools (Oberlin, Reed, Swarthmore, etc.) traditionally send a lot of kids to graduate school, and not so many into finance/professions (though more and more Swarthmore Swats are headed that way recently, it seems).
Between my two kids I looked at about 30 schools. I don’t believe there is another school that is quite close to U Chicago, but there are lots of schools that share aspects of it. Our daughter is enrolled at U Chicago and potential schools that she considered if she didn’t get in included Wash U, Williams, and Colgate. Lots of others but those seem to be the closest overall.
Someone mentioned looking at schools with special honors programs and I think that is also a valid approach. If your son is at U Michigan or Elon or Villanova or other places with honors programs, there may special housing and special programs for your son. The students he would interact most frequently with would be like him.
I live in Chicago and Hyde Park most certainly is urban. This is what urban life is like in Chicago unless you live in the Loop.
I do think you should be thinking about schools at this point. Maybe not talking about them though in order to avoid stress. For both of my kids, we starting seeing schools the summer before Junior year - a solid week of touring. This was a combination of places they thought they were interested in and places that I thought might be a good fit. The overall vibe, the weather, whatever can help them understand what they do and don’t want. We saw a couple of schools during Junior year and then did another weeklong tour the summer after Junior year. My son couldn’t decide between two for ED, so he went back and sat through classes at both early in his senior year and that made it clear to him what was best. While all colleges now have virtual this and that, these experiences are highly managed and in some cases do not reflect the experience(s) that my kids had visiting the schools in person.
With the significance of ED and REA, you son really needs to know what he wants before his senior year begins. If he plays a fall sport or has other significant time commitments during the fall he needs to also have his Common App and at least some of the college specific essays done before school starts. During COVID when schools dropped the test requirement, they discovered they didn’t have enough information about students. Last year my daughter encountered additional optional essay questions (as many as 4 for 1 college), optional videos, and optional resumes in addition to the optional interviews and optional test scores. The pressures will be tremendous if everything is left to the last minute. (Please know that Williams has supplemental nothing, not even one essay, which may be why so many athletes and legacies end up there).
To diffuse the stress, I spoke about the importance of safeties and liking them as well. She applied to 3 so she could have options if it came to that. She also applied to a number of “I’m pretty sure I’ll get in but in today’s environment, I don’t know” schools. And then she applied to top schools. It was a lot of applications, but this is what she wanted and it all worked out for her.
Good luck.
Carleton
Similar grad school placement success. Similar distribution requirements (UChicago a little more.) Probably even more classroom engagement and faculty interaction given undergrad focus and likely smaller classes (UChicago makes class sizes hard to discern by not publishing a common data set.)
Carleton is in Northfield which is very much a college town. There’s about 20,000 residents. Carleton and St OIaf are a mile apart and total 5,000 students between them.
Carleton is obviously far more rural than UChicago, but don’t be deceived. It’s only 45 min from Minneapolis. In fact the driving time from MSP (the Minneapolis airport) to Carleton is slightly less than ORD to UChicago. So, it’s rural without being remote or inaccessible.
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